How To Check DHCP Lease Time?

Written by gigmocha in Technology Professional

How To Check DHCP Lease Time?

If you’re someone that likes to browse the internet a lot, you’ll surely agree with me that DHCP offers tons of benefits. One of the advantages of using the network protocol is that it saves people most of the time-consuming tasks of configuring and managing a TCP/IP network.

Furthermore, when it comes to relying on a DHCP server to assign your device a valid IP address, there are a few factors that you need to keep in mind. One of them is the DHCP lease time – the time it takes the DHCP server to hold and manage a leased IP address on behalf of a DHCP-enabled client. That said, here’s a burning question; what is the best way to check for the DHCP lease time?

Depending on your system’s operating system, there are different ways to check for DHCP lease time. For Windows 10, the best approach is to open Command Prompt, type, and enter ipconfig /all in the command line window. Doing that, you should see the DHCP lease time on your screen.

One of the advantages of knowing how to check DHCP lease time is that you’ll get a better idea of when the leased IP address will expire. In the rest of this post, I’ll share everything you need to know about how to check DHCP lease time on your computer system. That’s not all; you’ll also learn how the lease time works as well as how you can renew it.

Understanding What DHCP Lease Time Means

What is DHCP lease time?

Before going to the main topic of today, which is  “how to check DHCP lease?”, let us start by getting familiar with and understanding what the term means. That said, here’s a quick question; what is a DHCP lease time?

As earlier stated, DHCP servers are the ones responsible for assigning IP addresses to clients upon requests. However, for this to happen, there needs to be a prior configuration of the servers with DHCP scope.

In case you don’t know, a DHCP scope is a range of available IP addresses that the DHCP servers lease out to DHCP-enabled clients on a given subnet. Furthermore, when creating a normal DHCP scope, one of the properties that you’ll need to set is the lease duration – that’s, the time you want the server to hold and manage the leased IP address for the client computer.

One thing you need to understand about the lease duration of most (if not all) DHCP servers is that it’s temporary and tends to expire every 24 hours – this is the default time. However, by creating the scope, you can always set up, renew, or even change the lease time.

Why Is the DHCP Lease Duration so Important?

Now that you’ve gotten a clearer picture of what DHCP lease time is all about, the next question is why is it that important?

The primary function of a DHCP lease duration is that it helps to eliminate the need for an IP address to remain stuck to a client’s computer forever. That said, it’s safe to say that the lease duration is more of a regulator that ensures that other client devices also have access to that particular IP address.

Here’s How You Can Check DHCP Lease Time

Finally, we’re back to the burning question of how you can check DHCP lease duration. As earlier mentioned, there are different methods to make that happen. However, this depends entirely on your PC and operating system.

If you’re a Windows 10 user and you’re interested in checking the default DHCP lease duration on your system, here are a few straightforward steps that you can follow.

  • First, you need to start by opening the “Command Prompt” or “Power Shell” of your PC.
  • Up next, proceed to the command line window. From there, type and enter this command – ipconfig /all.
  • After that, you’ll notice new information displayed on your PC screen. If you can notice that, all you need to do is look for “Lease Obtained” and “Lease Expired”.
  • To know your default DHCP lease duration, all you need to do is find the difference between the “Lease Obtained” and “Lease Expired”.

For macOS users, the method of checking to know the default DHCP lease duration is slightly different from that of Windows 10. For the operating system, here are a few simple steps that you can follow to know the lease time:

  • Start by opening Terminal. To do this, reach out to the dock at the bottom of your home screen and click “Launchpad.” From there, click on “Other” and you’ll find Terminal.
  • Up next, you need to identify the device name for your network device on your device’s operating system. It’s pretty simple! All you need to do is type the following command and hit enter on the Terminal window:

networksetup -listallhardwareports

  • By doing that, you’ll find the name of all devices on your network, including their respective MAC address.
  • Up next, you need to type the command below on the Terminal window to find the default DHCP lease duration.

ipconfig getpacket en0

  • However, you need to replace the en0 behind the command above with your device name. By doing this, you should see the lease duration right next to the “lease_time (uint32)” option.

How to Change Your DHCP Lease Time?

Like I mentioned earlier, you can always change the DHCP lease duration from the default settings to your preferred time. If you’re wondering why it is important for you to do that, one of the advantages of taking this move is to ensure you’re using a stable IP.

That said, here’s how you can change your DHCP lease time:

  • The DHCP lease time is controlled by the router. As such, for you to modify the duration, you need to go through the router.
  • Access the router from the browser by entering your IP address in the URL field.
  • If you can access the router’s settings, all you need now is to locate the “LAN settings or DHCP settings” tab.
  • Next, look for lease time or lease duration,,,,, or any related name.
  • Next, change the value to your preferred lease duration and click on the Save button.
  • That’s all! Now, follow the previous steps to check and see the new DHCP lease time.

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